Benedict continues open start to pontificate

Moving confidently through his first days as pontiff, Pope Benedict XVI acted to guarantee continuity in church leadership while trying to brighten his austere image.

Benedict greeted the faithful on the streets yesterday, waving and smiling at crowds gathered along the short stretch between the Vatican gates and his old apartment, where he spent some time in the afternoon.

“Viva il papa!” some shouted. The Pope, dressed all in white, raised both hands in a greeting.

Earlier, Benedict reappointed the entire Vatican hierarchy.

The Vatican also unveiled new email addresses for Benedict, following an innovation started by Pope John Paul II.

Benedict’s schedule also shows hints of the openness and symbolic gestures that were at the heart of John Paul’s reign. Tomorrow he will hold a meeting with journalists, something he regularly did as a cardinal.

An outdoor Mass to formally take the papal throne is scheduled for Sunday. Choosing an open-air installation over an indoor ceremony in St Peter’s Basilica shows Benedict favours the populist touch of recent popes who have made the same choice.

In another sign Benedict intends to follow John Paul in reaching out to other religions, the new Pope invited the chief rabbi of Rome, Riccardo di Segni, to the installation Mass.

The rabbi would not be able to attend as Sunday is the first day of Passover, but he was pleased to be asked, said Riccardo Pacifici, a spokesman for Rome’s Jewish community.

The Vatican expects at least 1,500 bilingual translators from the German-speaking areas of northern Italy to assist pilgrims from the Pope’s homeland. The following day, the Pope planned a separate audience with German faithful, Vatican spokesman Joaquin Navarro-Valls said.

Also on Monday, Benedict plans to visit the Rome basilica built over the tomb of St Paul, who helped bring Christianity to regions on both sides of the current Catholic-Orthodox divide.

In the first days of his papacy, 78-year-old Benedict has projected two clear styles.

One was expected: the confident and well-prepared Vatican insider who was one of John Paul’s closest advisers for more than two decades. His decisions on the top-level posts came quickly – some popes have struggled for weeks – and showed continuity with his predecessor.

But the second image emerging – a humble and welcoming pastor – has caught many off guard.

The pontiff’s name, Cardinal Joseph Ratzinger, became synonymous among Catholics with the church’s strictest factions and earned him nicknames that played off his German background, such as “God’s rottweiler”.

But top prelates and other church experts say it was an unfair reputation.

All agree that he is strongly rooted in church traditions and inflexible on issues such as the church’s bans on contraception and women priests as was John Paul. The new pontiff may lack his predecessor’s charisma, but he shares his sense of reaching out to the faithful, they say.

“He was a follower and servant of the late Pope John Paul II,” Vatican-based Colombian cardinal Lopez Trujillo told Colombian radio RCN.

“He is a simple man, serene, cordial, with a fine sense of humour and very kind. … No one has seen him in a moment of indisposition of rancour or intolerance. These are myths the press invented.”